The Wimbledon App 2016 - Create My Story

IBM Interactive Experience / The Championships, Wimbledon

For a fortnight every year, sports fans turn their gaze to The Championships, Wimbledon, with most watching the on-court action on their TVs. But in 2016, 21m people chose the tournament's digital platforms.

Objectives

With 2016 set to be a busy year for sports, organisers needed to turn a potential threat to its viewer numbers into an opportunity and reach out to new audiences.

Strategy and execution

For the 2016 tournament, the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) and partner IBM reinvented its Social Command Centre platform as the Cognitive Social Command Centre, using IBM Watson technology to gain deeper levels of real-time insight, reacting to the digital behaviour of a more fickle, younger audience.

Metadata from more than 17m pieces of content was aggregated and displayed in real-time dashboards at the centre, giving the editorial team insights into what stories were resonating with fans.

This helped the team tailor content and adapt it for specific media, such as Facebook or Twitter. An Apple TV app enabled viewers with smart TVs to tune into Live @ Wimbledon TV and radio broadcasts, as well as live scores, photo galleries and VOD content.